SDCC 09: Jigsaw Visits Castlevania

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Saw director signs on to videogame adaptation.

By Scott Collura

Comic-Con has barely begun but the news is starting to pour in, including this tidbit about the oft-rumored film adaptation of the popular Konami videogame Castlevania. Word has it that James Wan, the co-creator of the Saw franchise and director of the first film in that series, will be co-writing and directing the Castlevania film for producer Paul W.S. Anderson.

"I'm very fresh on this project, so it's early stages and I'm still trying to work things out, but the producers love my vision for it," Wan tells the site. "I'll be working on the script with a writer to give it a new spin, different to the previous versions. This will have my stamp on it which Konami is very excited about."

Interestingly, it was reported back in 2007 that Death Sentence screenwriter Ian Jeffers was rewriting Anderson's Castlevania script. Death Sentence, of course, was directed by Wan, though it's not clear whether or not Jeffers is the writer Wan is referring to.

"The thing I love about what Konami did with Castlevania was taking the iconic Dracula mythology and Eastern-European setting, and retelling it with a Japanese pop-cultural sensibility," says Wan. "That's the East-meets-West tone I want to visually expand on for the film. I'm thrilled by the opportunity to make a highly stylized, fantasy, action film that focuses on the gothic storyline and the cool, anime-like characters. For once, the human hero is as sexy and dangerous as the vampire villain, and his weapon of choice was what attracted me to the project in the first place -- The Vampire Killer Whip."